Kiss My Relics

Hermaphroditic Fictions of the Middle Ages

David Rollo

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780226724614
• eBook ISBN: 9780226724607
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: Literature

Conservative thinkers of the early Middle Ages conceived of sensual gratification as a demonic snare contrived to debase the higher faculties of humanity, and they identified pagan writing as one of the primary conduits of decadence. Two aspects of the pagan legacy were treated with particular distrust: fiction, conceived as a devious contrivance that falsified God's order; and rhetorical opulence, viewed as a vain extravagance. Writing that offered these dangerous allurements came to be known as "hermaphroditic" and, by the later Middle Ages, to be equated with homosexuality.

 

At the margins of these developments, however, some authors began to validate fiction as a medium for truth and a source of legitimate enjoyment, while others began to explore and defend the pleasures of opulent rhetoric. Here David Rollo examines two such texts—Alain de Lille's De planctu Naturae and Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun's Roman de la Rose—arguing that their authors, in acknowledging the liberating potential of their irregular written orientations, brought about a nuanced reappraisal of homosexuality. Rollo concludes with a consideration of the influence of the latter on Chaucer's Pardoner's Prologue and Tale.

1

Martianus Capella, Remigius of Auxerre, William of Malmesbury

CHAPTER ONE

Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii: A Brother to Hermaphroditus

The De nuptiis is the most confounding of texts. It is couched in Latin of often formidable opacity¹ and displays extreme eccentricities of tone and structure. A first-person narrator, who is an impatient old man (Felix Capella), explains how he once related the wedding of Philology and Mercury² to his disrespectful son (Martianus) and proceeds to tell the story he told all over again (1.2–3). However, the end of the tale is repeatedly deferred, as the authorial surrogate pauses to banter affectionately with a muse (3.221–22) and to argue with his literary genre, Menippean satire, which, personified, is attentively, though critically, observing the proceedings (6.576–79, 8.806–9). What goes on in the story the old man narrates is at least as bizarre, and here too consummation is inordinately withheld: the classical gods may assemble to celebrate the wedding, but they find themselves obliged instead to listen to the relentless self-exposure of mortal learning in the allegorized figures of Grammar, Dialectic, Rhetoric, Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Harmony.

Such oddities as these (and others that will be considered in due course) have prompted one reader to conjecture that Martianus was probably insane,³ with the expedient implication that his demented ravings are undeserving of academic scrutiny. This view has fortunately failed to gain wide acceptance, and recent scholarship has done much to elucidate the significance of the celestial union. Luciano Lenaz and Jean Préaux argue, with different emphases, that the De nuptiis is a soteriological allegory.⁴ Concentrating particularly on the second book, Lenaz sees in the story a variation on the Gnostic paradigm of the salvator salvandus, in which Philology and Mercury are respectively the fallen and transcendent halves of the divided soul.⁵ These ideas have been further pursued by Danuta Shanzer, who agrees that Philology represents the lapsarian trace of a primal unity, but who also points out that she is exceptional in the fallen order because, through a mastery of theurgical practice, she has of herself taken the first steps towards salvation.⁶ Stressing the importance of theurgy, Shanzer concludes that the De nuptiis was designed to be understood only by a sectarian elite, a group of initiates already conversant with the esoteric rituals that Philology performs; and, as such, it was calculatedly incomprehensible to anyone else, its multiple obscurities symptoms of a deliberate gesture of exclusion.⁷ Still according to Shanzer, this exclusivity was determined by historical criteria: produced during a period in which theurgy was punishable, the De nuptiis was by design opaque, an encoded message of serious import covered by an intentional veil of inconsequentiality.⁸

If Shanzer is right, then we today can approach the De nuptiis with no more than a feeling of hopeless disqualification. Faced with a work of purposeful unintelligibility, we may at best describe only its grammatical meaning, and even this is a daunting enterprise. It is impossible to stretch a syncretic net wide enough to accommodate its bewildering panoply of allegorized principles, which have a marked tendency to blend into one another. For example, Philology, Sophia, Pallas, Philosophy, Mantice, and Phronesis at various times and in different ways all seem to personify wisdom, but the implied distinction between them is often hard to determine. Similarly, following Lenaz, we could see in Philology a particular aspect of the soul, but we must then establish a difference between this category and the allied valences of Sophia, Mantice, and Psyche.⁹

Assessed within the perspective of medieval reception, these problems are largely overcome by the tradition of glossing I mentioned earlier. The ninth-century works of Eriugena, Martin of Laon, and Remigius of Auxerre clarify the difficulties of the original with a cluster of simplified (but by no means simplistic) definitions, recasting the marriage of Mercury and Philology as the union of sermo and ratio, eloquence and reason, the requisite attributes of intellectual inquiry and expression.¹⁰ Although the products of a Christian culture and very distinct from the pagan epistemology of fifth-century Carthage, these definitions unquestionably reflect allegorical principles at work in the original. Mercury embodies in utterance the movements of the mind of Jupiter¹¹ and, as messenger of the gods, bridges the transcendent and the contingent, while Philology suggests by her very name the human desire to elucidate the mysteries of creation through communion with the divine. Mercury, therefore, brings illumination downwards to humanity, and the earthbound Philology strives upwards to explore the secret recesses of the cosmos.¹² If only indirectly, their interaction in fact precedes their marriage: Mercury, by granting men and women the gift of the alphabet, supplied the medium through which Philology recorded her pursuit of knowledge.¹³ Philology in return provided the sum of human learning, the Disciplines or Arts, who are said from then on to act as handmaidens in Mercury’s household.¹⁴

The effects of the final union of these two principles are outlined in the song of the Muse Thalia:

“nunc, nunc beantur artes,

quas sic sacratis ambo,

ut dent meare caelo,

reserent caducis astra

ac lucidam usque ad aethram

pia subuolare uota.

per uos uigil decensque

nus mentis ima complet,

per uos probata lingua

fert glorias per aeuum.

uos disciplinas omnes

ac nos sacrate Musas.” (2.126)

“Now, now the arts are blessed, so sanctified by you both that they open a path to the heavens, unlock the stars for the fallen, and let pious invocations fly from below up into the unclouded ether. Through you, the keen and noble intellect fills the void and proven language finds glory through the eons. Sanctify, then, all the disciplines, and sanctify us, the Muses.”

Guaranteed is the apotheosis of probata lingua and nus mentis. The first of these categories implies a transfigured mode of communication, and the second, a virtual oxymoron bringing together divine cognizance (nus) and the mortal intellect (mens), is most adequately glossed as the potential for transcendence in the human mind.¹⁵ Therefore, in an ascensional paean the higher faculties of humanity (nus mentis/Philology) will accede to an eloquence of divine origin (probata lingua/Mercury) and intellectual epiphany will be achieved.

Even from this, one thing is clear: Mercury, as Martianus presents him, is no more than a principle of mediation, certainly divine in origin, but irrelevant without a first principle of thought, knowledge, or wisdom to convey. He is only a means to an ulterior end, an as yet undefined communicative pattern through which the movements of the divine mind can be rendered comprehensible.

This higher principle of knowledge that Mercury must strive to serve achieves a textual function in the figure of Pallas, whose preeminence in the cosmic order is celebrated in a verse sequence that acts as a prelude to the exposition of Geometry, the median figure among the Arts:

Virgo armata decens, rerum sapientia, Pallas,

aetherius fomes, mens et sollertia fati,

ingenium mundi, prudentia sacra Tonantis,

ardor doctificus nostraeque industria sortis,

quae facis arbitrium sapientis praeuia curae

ac rationis apex diuumque hominumque sacer nus,

ultra terga means rapidi ac splendentis Olympi,

celsior una Iove, flammantis circulus aethrae,

επταζ in numeris, prior igni, tertia Luna. (6.567)

Virgin Pallas, noble in arms and knowing all things, mover of the ether, mind and mentor of fate, guiding force of the universe, sacred intelligence of the Thunderer, mistress of ardent learning, holder of our destiny—in your careful prescience you inspire the judgment of the wise. Apex of reason, sacred mind of gods and men, you pass beyond the confines of swift, resplendent Olympus and alone rise higher than Jove. You are the circle of flaming ether. You are the heptad among the numbers. You are prior to fire. And you are the third moon.

Integral and unsullied, Pallas transcends any law of copulation in her origins and in the virgin inaccessibility she maintains. By defying hermeneutic access in this way and yet also incarnating universal knowledge, she is the impossible consummation of Mercury’s very existence. It is revealing, therefore, that in sequential acts of supplementation Mercury seeks to approximate this absolute by selecting a bride from among the female figures who enjoy Pallas’ patronage (1.6–7). His first choice is Sophia, a less hieratic manifestation of the same principle. But he learns that she is devoted to the virgin ways of her patroness.¹⁶ He then elects to wed Mantice, a prophetic analogue of Sophia. However, although rejecting virginity (and thereby showing her further removal from the untainted), she has chosen to devote herself to Apollo.¹⁷ Psyche is his third choice, and she has received from Pallas’ own breast the mantle of wisdom. Nevertheless he discovers that she has been imprisoned by Cupid.¹⁸ Disappointed in his first three choices, Mercury traces a centrifugal course around a seemingly inaccessible absolute.

His final choice of bride is determined by Apollo, who proposes the eminently suitable Philology: she is the earthly patroness of the female figures Mercury has himself chosen and is therefore already closer to Pallas than any of them.¹⁹ She is, moreover, immensely learned:

“est igitur prisci generis doctissima uirgo

conscia Parnaso, cui fulgent sidera coetu,

cui nec Tartareos claustra occultare recessus,

nec Iouis arbitrium rutilantia fulmina possunt;

fluctigena spectans qualis sub gurgite Nereus,

quaeque tuos norit fratrum per regna recursus,

peruigil immodico penetrans arcana labore,

quae possit docta totum praeuertere cura,

quod superis praescire datum. quin crebrius in nos

ius habet illa, deos urgens in iussa coactos,

et quod nulla queat superum temptare potestas,

inuito scit posse Ioue. stent ardua magno,

alterutrum cumulat parilem meruisse iugalem.”

(1.22; Apollo to Mercury)

“There is a most learned girl of noble lineage who is familiar with Parnassus, on whom shines the convergence of the stars, to whom the recondite powers cannot shut off the pits of Tartarus and from whom flaming thunderbolts cannot hide the thoughts of Jove. In the ocean’s depths she studies the nature of sea-born Nereus, and in the heavens she knows the trail you take through the realms of your brothers. With unstinting labor and constant attention she penetrates all that is arcane, and with learned care she can anticipate what the gods are given to foresee. Very often she has rights even over us, making us despite our divinity her subordinates and commanding us accordingly. She knows that she alone is capable of achieving what no divine power would presume to attempt against the will of Jove. The course I propose is certainly arduous, but it is most worthwhile because you are perfectly suited to one another as equals.”

In her capacity to inquire, Philology is at least the equal of the Olympian gods, and, as Thalia indicates in the song quoted earlier, she is even superior to her future husband: “doctus ille divus, sed doctior illa puella.” Nevertheless, as Préaux has convincingly argued, this insistence on learning severely circumscribes Philology’s aptitudes: she is an applied intellect, a gatherer of facts, able to observe and to retain; but nowhere is she said to have attained the epiphany of understanding.²⁰ Although of unlimited potential, she has not achieved union with the divine wisdom located beyond Jupiter himself, the transcendent presence of the “rationis apex,” the “divumque hominumque sacer nus” incarnated by Pallas. Ultimately it is not Mercury but the goddess of wisdom who stands as the fulfillment of the intellectual quest of mankind. To Philology Mercury is no more than a means. Pallas is the end.

Mercury and Philology accordingly mediate one another’s desire for the absolute. Through him, she will ascend to the probata lingua of divinity, acquire a transcendent vehicle for understanding. Through her, he will unite with a higher intellectual power, move further toward the First Principle of Wisdom that he so systematically sought to approximate in his own choices of bride.

But this reciprocal mediation, relying as it does upon a marriage of categories, displays an unavoidable irreverence to the virginity of the goal it pursues. Pallas’ own response to the announcement of the wedding amply illustrates this problem:

tunc Pallas aliquanto summissior ac uirginalis pudoris rubore suffusa oculosque peplo, quod rutilum circum caput gestabat, obnubens improbabat aliquantum, quod super nuptiis uirgo consulitur praesertimque eius, quam propter consociationis officia manere cupiret semper intactam. dedignatur praeterea huius modi adhibere consensum, cum ita expers totius copulae censeatur, ut neque de ulla commixtione progenita neque ipsa procreare quicquam Arithmetica teste monstretur. ac tunc septem radiorum coronam soliuaga uirginitas renudauit, ne feturarum causis et copulis interesset. quia tamen eius optauerat Iuppiter exegeratque consilium, suadet deos maritos dearumque grandeauas in haec decernenda conduci; quippe conuenire Cyllenio, ut pro officiorum praemiis potissimorum fauor caelitum eius uincla sanciret. (1.40)

Then Pallas blushed with a modesty befitting a virgin and drew the veil she wore to cover her resplendent head down over her eyes. She quietly observed how inappropriate it was that a virgin should have been consulted about a marriage, especially the marriage of a girl who had so much in common with her and who, she believed, should ideally remain untouched. She also declined to give her c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1: Martianus Capella, Remigius of Auxerre, William of Malmesbury
• Part 2: Alain de Lille: De planctu Naturae
• Part 3: Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun: Le Roman de la Rose
• Conclusion: Never Mind the Relics
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index